Careers and salaries (Engineering)

Electrical Engineering
Hottest area for Electrical Engineers is solid-state circuit designers, reported as $115,000 even surpassed managers' salaries. Engineers who work in industrial application and systems and control had the lowest wages but these wages were well above national norms. Salaries are highest by far in San Francisco, Followed by Boston, Baltimore, San Diego. Salaries are high in Chicago and Raleigh Durham region, Portland (Oregon), Dallas, Los Angles, Phoenix (Arizona). Hot careers for Electrical engineers are DSP, C/C++, ASIC design, Analog design, Systems integration, Opto/Optoelectronic, Wireless design, Deep sub micron integrated circuit.

Mechanical Engineering
Mechanical Engineers develop power-using machines such as refrigeration and air-conditioning equipment, machine tools, material handling systems, elevators and escalators, industrial production equipment, and robots used in manufacturing. They also design tools needed by other engineers for their work. Computers assist mechanical engineers by accurately and efficiently performing computations and by aiding the design process by permitting the modeling and simulation of new designs. Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) are used for design data processing and for developing alternative designs.

Aerospace Engineering
Aerospace engineers develop new technologies for use in aviation, defense systems, and space exploration, often specializing in areas such as structural design, guidance, navigation and control, instrumentation and communication, or production methods. They often use Computer-aided Design (CAD) Tools, robotics, and lasers and advanced electronic optics . Department of Defense and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, provided almost 15 percent of Aerospace engineers jobs. Average Entry level jobs for MS candidates is about 65K and for PhD. it is 70K

Computer Science
With the downturn in the jobs market, a lot of the leading-edge and mission-critical projects have been put on hold. So in terms of recruitment there has been a massive shift from J2EE or Java, C++ projects, or at least projects that require those technologies to more database export oriented projects. There is increased demand for project manager work and people with SAP and Oracle skills. Mainframe skills are no longer as much in demand, notably: AS400, RPG, Cobol, Cics. A lot of new projects with strong server side such as Java, J2B, EJB, plus languages like C# and C++ is always going to be around. Most CS jobs are in California (Core Software companies) and NY (Financial firms), Texas region.
Engineering degree from Top Engineering School is worth it.. many get 6 figure starting salaries!

Top 5 Master's Degrees in most Demand

M.B.A.

Electrical Engineering

Computer Science

Computer Engineering

Mechanical Engineering

Top 5 Ph.D.'s Degrees in most Demand

Electrical engineering

Computer Engineering

Mechanical Engineering

Computer Science

Chemical Engineering

Salary Report (Median salary in USA)

Aeronautical Engineer 104k

Biomedical Engineer 87k

Chemical Engineer 95k

Computer Engineers 101k

Electrical Engineer 90k

Industrial Engineer 79k

Environmental Engineer 81k

Mechanical Engineer 81k

Civil Engineer 80k

Petroleum Engineers 131k

In 2012, engineers (USA) held about 2 million jobs. Following is the distribution of employment by engineering specialty: